Muskrats and beavers are rodents. Beavers can do major damage to duck habitat, flooding out nesting grounds and such. I've shot a few beavers in my time because they kept damming up a creek and flooding out some wetlands.

Don't forget mink, glad to see this topic brought up. It is one of the biggest problems when it comes to the nesting in the prarie pothole region. I don't remember the numbers, but the percentage of eggs, and baby duck's, and geese lost to predators is huge!

Just be careful about the regulations before you go out blasting predators, or nest robbers.

Yeah I was just out at my blind yesterday and found two goose nests within 100yrds of it and a wood duck egg on a log, about 20 yrds from the closest tree. anyone know what got the egg, it had a dime-sized hole in it with the yolk still in it.

Things eating ducks and duck eggs is the problem. 40% of the landscape needs to be in grass for population expanding reproduction and living in the PPR I can tell you most areas fall short of this. These are the critters that inflict harm to ducks http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/dist ... edator.htm